Ephel Duath

Brutal band and album name, but the disorientating language suits the music at hand, which sounds more like a bizarre and murderous after-hours carnival of vertigo than any sort of metal we've previously known. Nothing less than a complete inversion of songs here, with Italy's Ephel Duath totally deconstructing the black metal genre and starting anew on this very laborious 73-minute disc. The song structures sound like the Dillinger Escape Plan writing a score for the merry-go-round at a carnival of doom; just a nightmarish hodgepodge of sounds that under no circumstance can the listener actually digest or comprehend. All one can really do is sit back, let it attack and laugh at how utterly surreal music has become. Without a doubt the best thing to happen to black metal in a long time, too bad it becomes a headache after about two minutes, no exaggeration. Ephel Duath is the end of music as we know it. Sober reality: the electronic drums here sound more like real drums than what is heard on most current death metal releases.